Alphabet to buy Intersect Power to bypass energy grid bottlenecks

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has agreed to acquire Intersect Power for $4.75 billion in cash, along with the assumption of the company’s existing debt.

The deal, announced Monday, is aimed at helping Alphabet expand its power-generation capacity in tandem with new data centre developments, without relying heavily on local utility grids that are increasingly strained by the rapid growth of AI workloads. Access to reliable energy has become a central challenge for companies training and operating large-scale AI models.

Alphabet already held a minority stake in Intersect Power following an $800 million strategic funding round led by Google and TPG Rise Climate last December. That earlier partnership set an ambitious goal of deploying up to $20 billion in total investment by 2030.

The acquisition will include Intersect Power’s future development pipeline, but it will not include the company’s existing operating assets. Those assets are expected to be acquired by other investors and run as a separate business.

Intersect’s planned data parks — purpose-built sites co-located with wind, solar, and battery storage infrastructure — are designed to supply power directly to data centres. According to Google’s earlier announcement, the first of these facilities is expected to come online late next year, with full buildout targeted for completion by 2027.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of next year.

While Google will be the primary customer for the new capacity, Intersect’s campuses are designed as industrial-style parks capable of hosting AI chips and infrastructure from other companies alongside Google’s own systems.